WHY DOES GOOGLE CHROME USE SO MUCH RAM?

Chrome splits every tab, plugin, and extension into its own process. This leads to higher RAM usage since it has to duplicate some tasks for every tab. Also, Chrome's prerendering feature can cause higher memory usage. Certain extensions or websites may also leak memory causing higher RAM usage. And, of course, the more tabs, extensions, and plugins you have open installed, and running, the more memory Chrome is going to use.